


in-between.

by scoundrelhan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Homophobic Language, Identity Issues, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Self-Destructive Tendencies, there's only one instance bc i'm not about that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:32:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7279312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoundrelhan/pseuds/scoundrelhan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’m a strange new kind of in-between thing, aren’t I? Not at home with the dead, nor with the living."<br/>- Sophocles, from Antigone</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright! This is the first fic I've ever actually committed to, and I'm excited about it. I'll try my best to keep a consistent update schedule, but work and writer's block may hold me back. Thanks to the people who put up with my constant requests for opinions/validation, and of course, thanks to you guys for taking the time to read!
> 
> P.S. I haven't set foot outside of the U.S. so any descriptions of foreign cities/areas are probably (most definitely) wildly inaccurate. Any use of foreign language is also going to be very rough since I am only fluent in English, so direct your hate towards Google/Google Translate. Please bear with me, and don't be afraid to share your thoughts!

_France_

_Near the border of Germany_

 

There was this one memory - not exactly happy, but not bloody, or heartbreaking like most he carried out of the war - that Steve couldn't stop mulling over from the last time he’d been in France.

He traced a finger through the fog collecting on the passenger window of the truck him and Sam stole three cities back. Instead of the hazy green of corn fields streaking by in the fading twilight, all he could see was Bucky wiping melted snow from the barrel of his rifle, a cartridge of ammo between his teeth, and those unkempt bangs falling across his dirt-streaked forehead. French winters were brutal, snarling creatures that crept into every part of one's bones, but Bucky had been a goddamn radiator at Steve's side in the foxholes they'd hid in. He’d always been the one with the warmer blood even back home.

That was all. Steve didn't know why it had stuck with him. The angles of Bucky's face and the freezing wind - he had no idea why, but they wouldn't leave him alone. He guessed perhaps it was the peacefulness: the clear night spread above them, the desolate French farmland. Or maybe it was just Bucky. Bucky, smiling around a bullet casing. Bucky, whispering about how one of those days Dugan was gonna get them blown to kingdom come because of his snoring. Bucky, alive and himself. Steve shivered, pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt past his fingertips to chase the phantom cold away.

Static brought him back to the front seat, and Sam, who was messing with the radio settings. He turned it off after a minute of white noise.

“I took a semester of French in a high school," Sam admitted, fingers tapping out a beat that filled the empty silence that had settled in the front seat. “Ended up dropping it for Spanish.”

Steve hadn’t had any proper schooling in regards to language. He had learned a bullet-ridden dialect, traded smokes he didn't want and D-rations to Dernier for a bastard vocabulary that contained more phrases meant for insult than conversation.

“ _Américain stupide_ ,” Steve said with a wide grin.

He could still hear the exasperation in Dernier’s voice, the muttering under his breath before he’d draw out the syllables a third, fourth time for Steve as the others kept watch or caught up on sleep in the early hours before the shells started pounding the earth again like violent rain.

Sam, eyes a little bloodshot and bruised from driving all night, met Steve’s gaze, and said, “ _Va te faire foutre_ , Cap.”

That punched a laugh out of Steve.

“I should take over for a while,” he replied, loud enough to be heard over the steady thrum of the truck’s sputtering engine. Sam’s teeth flashed in the light of another car’s headlights when he smiled his agreement.

 

-

 

Steve had been doing most of the driving after they’d stepped onto European soil. Sam didn't like the unfamiliar reversal, having to driving in the left lane on the right side of the car, but it was second nature to Steve, like breathing.

He'd learned how to operate stolen Jeeps - _borrowed_ , Bucky used to remind him with a smile that suggested otherwise - on English back roads with Bucky in the passenger seat, whooping and hollering like they were kids who'd gotten away with something clever. Like they weren't rumbling by bombed remnants of cities, chimneys like gravestones for the houses that had once stood in those lonely fields. Sometimes, Dugan would hitch a ride in the back, legs propped up beside Steve’s ear.

 _I’m feelin’ more suicidal than usual, boys_ , he’d say to piss Steve off, make him stall on purpose so that the Jeep would nearly buck Dugan out like a mule.

He remembered lurching his way down a deserted road - Steve couldn’t dredge up a name for it, wasn’t sure if back then it had one either - the gears screaming whenever he shifted too fast or too soon, and Bucky reminding him to stop acting like the gearshift was trying to bite his fingers off.

 _It's easy, Rogers. Look, you just gotta listen to her. She’ll tell you what she wants_ , Bucky whispered to him, but that wasn't quite right. His voice was much softer and gentler in his mind than Steve knew it had been. Memories were funny like that.

They’d gone farther than they’d meant to, crossed into a village with weary-eyed inhabitants that watched them speed by from their sagging porches. The roar of the engine tore through the hushed silence like a gunshot in the night. It felt like they’d interrupted a funeral. They’d turned around, then, in the yellowing lawn of a half-destroyed church after reality weighed down the dreamlike state they’d worked themselves into.

It was unnerving how easy Bucky did that: distracted him, reshuffled his priorities, blinded him like the goddamn sun, so all Steve could see was him and only him. He ached to feel that again, like he was going blind and didn’t care because it was worth it. There was no doubt in his mind that they were closer than they’d been in over a year and a half of searching, waiting, praying for a sign. His gut was never wrong when it came to Bucky. Maybe it was dumb, random luck. Maybe it was decades of learning someone inside and out till you knew every secret, every habit, till you could shuffle their bones and put them back in order. Maybe, maybe. It didn't matter how he knew; it mattered that Bucky was breathing the same air rushing through the open window and filling up Steve’s lungs.

They _had_ to be close.

He felt young and strange, light as a cloud, as he watched the the infinite yellow dashes on the blacktop disappear beneath the hood of the car; for a second, they were the tally marks of his life, stretching on and on until fading into the distance. Someone else, another lonely sedan with a reason to be up at two in the morning, sped past in the opposite direction.

It took him a long moment to realize what he felt was hope.

 

-

 

Time didn't make much sense to Steve anymore, hadn't since they pumped him full of chemicals and he’d had to watch his world plummet to its death. Except, it hadn't. He’d had this crazy, hysterical theory after that fight on the bridge that the only reason he’d made it out of the war alive was because Bucky hadn't really died at the bottom of that godforsaken gorge. Nothing in Steve’s life seemed to play by the rules of logic, except this one: if Bucky was alive, so was Steve. If Bucky was in another country, across an ocean or two, Steve would find his way there one way or another. It was only a matter of seconds, minutes, years, which Steve, thankfully - or cursedly, depending on the day - had an abundance.

He was made mostly of the past with no middle ground, and too much future. He could have been another ninety years older, another ninety millenia. Didn't matter, really. He’d found his first gray hair the evening before him and Sam left. Whenever he discovered a wrinkle that looked like it was there to stay, he’d wake up and find his skin had mended itself in the night, smoothed out like pressed cotton.

Steve felt as old as the earth, but his blood wouldn't let him show it.

The only thing that proved his age was the history weighing down his soul. All of those decades were knocking on the backs of his teeth, desperate to spill from his lips and into the ears of the willing. They were dying to be told, practically bleeding out of his veins; instead, they filled his dreams like a faucet that couldn’t be shut off.

He dreamed of his mother a lot, and the sadness in her eyes when she retold the stories of a battle-hungry country that she’d unknowingly traded for another. He empathized with her more now in another century than he ever had, more than when she was alive and cleaning him up with steady hands, or waiting for him to die in the night along with the other weak souls.

Some people, Steve thought, were never really understood until they were dead.

Sarah Rogers had been a fearsome woman with a protective streak the size of the Atlantic, and Steve had been caught dead in the center of it. Ma had been a private woman, amiable but reserved, only talked to a few of the old women down the hall who had accents that painted pictures of green hills and steep cliffs dipping into a blue, blue foreign sea. She had known how hard it was for Steve: to be young but aged by his illnesses, scrawnier and thinner than the other boys who’d roamed the streets, but life was harder for everyone in those days. She had told him every morning before she left for the hospital and he to school to not let trouble find him, but Steve had been, and still was, the kind of person who trouble gravitated towards, and they’d both known it.

Sarah Rogers had also had a stubborn streak the size of the Eastern seaboard, and it’d showed in how she loved. She used to say it was her Irish blood, an inherited trait, but Steve knew now it was born from the sweat and tears of raising a child alone in a society dead set on crippling what little stability she’d fought to have. He had loved her with equal stubbornness, adored her rough affection, her worried rage whenever he came home with purpled skin and a rattling cough.

She had loved Bucky that way, too, took him in with a heart that shouldn’t have had any more room to expand and didn't let go until life let go of her first.

The first time Bucky walked Steve home after a fight - a stupid one like most, one that Steve had practically begged for with his reckless tongue and tiny fists that were always faster than his common sense - they were 9 years old and Ma had met them at the door with an expression that could have leveled mountains. Bucky had bowed his head, overgrown bangs falling around his face like a curtain, as he murmured a soft, Evening, ma’am. Steve couldn’t meet her eyes that had looked like the ocean just before a storm, knew he only worried her more when she was gone tending to people like their neighbor, Mrs. Doyle, who’d coughed blood all over her knitting at their dinner table two on a Sunday afternoon and was next to her husband in the ground by the following Tuesday.

It was like watching ice melt in a glass, gradual but inevitable, the way Bucky worked his way into people’s good graces. He had told Ma in detail - barring the part where Steve threw the first punch - how he’d been on his way from the market after buying soap, and saw a couple of older boys wailing on Steve in the alley between the Mcallister’s tailor shop and the Walsh’s diner. Bucky’s arm had still been around Steve’s shoulders even though he hadn't really needed the support. Ma had smiled at Steve, more with her eyes than her mouth, which he’d learned from a young age was a rare, and precious thing.

 _What's your name, boy?_ She’d asked, and Bucky had told her. _James Barnes, ma’am_. She’d pushed the dark hair away from his eyes, scrutinized the black eye and the bloody knuckles he’d gotten from jumping to Steve’s defense, and gave him a tattered, wet cloth for his hand. She whispered something to him that to this day Steve didn't know what about - but it had made Bucky duck his head, lips twisting to hide a smile, so he maybe had an inkling of who - and that was that.

Steve wiped his palm through the dew that had settled overnight on the truck’s hood. He’d slept maybe two hours in the back seat, and that was what he’d dreamt about: Bucky, a solid weight to lean against; Ma, fussing over his torn pants they couldn’t afford to have tailored and his busted nose. He’d been anemic back then; it took nearly an hour for the bleeding to go from a waterfall to a trickle.

Even after living through the days with an empty stomach, days where he’d pretend to scour the apartment for spare change that wasn’t there, days spent standing over a hole as yet another friend was lowered into the wet earth and knowing it could have very well been him, Steve still missed that version of home - the one before the serum, and the war, and the ice, and everything between and after. It was the lesser of two evils, wasn’t simple or kind, but it was harsh and cruel in a way that was familiar, etched into the meat of his soul.

Steve closed his eyes, and waited for the sun to spread its warm fingers through the wheat grass.

 

* * *

 

_Bucharest, Romania_

_Four months later_

 

Steve’s mind liked to remind him of the cold.

It always circled back to the piercing clarity of missions in the middle of a European winter; his numb fingers after a snowball fight in the street outside his elementary schoolhouse; the sound of a freezing ocean churning and dragging him into the bottomless void; the crunch of frozen grave dirt beneath his shoes while he watched Bucky wipe at his red-rimmed eyes.

When Bucky was nine, the year him and Steve had first bloodied their fists for each other, his mother had come down with an unshakable case of influenza. Steve didn't get to meet her before she passed, but he’d gone to the funeral, stood in the ocean of tombstones and snow while the priest asked the four people congregation to pray with him. It was only Bucky, Steve, his mother, and Bucky’s neighbor, Mrs. Stoica. Bucky was the only immediate family in attendance; his father had died halfway across the Atlantic on the ship that had been bringing their small family and hundreds of others stateside. The kids at school used to call him all sorts of terrible variations of orphan, gypsy, things that earned them a few solid punches until Bucky had to drag Steve away, kicking and spitting.

 _It ain't worth it_ , Bucky had told him after they’d made it back to Steve’s, sprawled out on the dry-rotted floor. _Don't waste your breath on me._

 _I can waste my breath on whoever I want_ , Steve had said, and meant it. Bucky never did see how important he was.

Steve had slept a total of 40 restless minutes before he was woken up by the toll of a church bell from 1926 - no, it was 2015, and the wail of a police siren. It was June, 2015 and he was lying on a cheap mattress in a Romanian hotel room, decades and miles away from any version, especially that one, of Brooklyn.

He listened to the traffic rumbling about outside, and the steady rattle of the air conditioner as it coughed out recycled air. Sam snored lightly in the other bed.

It was getting more and more difficult to hide his desperation. Instead of letting himself rest, Steve counted the seconds wasted that could have been spent turning over every cobblestone, brick, every goddamn rock in Eastern Europe. Chasing a shade wearing the face of his best friend wasn't enough to make him feel tangible anymore. All he had that was real was his frustration and his exhaustion, and he held them in his chest like a deep breath, let them tether him to the scratchy sheets and his deteriorating body.

Steve had stopped looking in the mirror, actively avoided any surface that showed him a suggestion of a reflection. Sam’s furrowed brows and frowns were enough to tell him he did not look like the same man that had gone into this. He was very far away from himself most days, ran on autopilot, only freed himself from the numbness long enough to talk about possible leads or to perform necessary human rituals. The serum worked with him for the most part, made up for whatever he was lacking to provide whether that be sleep, or a proper meal. Steve knew his boundaries, but that didn’t stop them from blurring like the borders of the maps they’d used to replace the floral-patterned wallpaper.

He could see in the darkness the strings that stretched and branched out from one end of the world to the other, arteries and capillaries snaking their way through cities that they had come out of empty handed. In the past couple of months, the file Natasha had given Steve lead him and Sam on a twisted warpath through east Germany, Ukraine, the most remote parts of Russia. Most of the bases were abandoned when they got to them, as dead as the last dead ends before them. Some put up a fight, but it was clear that they had severed the spine of Hydra back in D.C. The remaining heads were just waiting to bleed out and fade into obsolescence; Steve was more than happy to hasten their demise.

Every ex-agent, criminal, contracted mercenary and low life they’d encountered so far had acted like Bucky was a prized weapon, something that one could simply procure like a goddamn antique. He took extra pleasure in watching them bleed, the feeling of their skin splitting beneath his knuckles as they begged. Steve supposed that wasn’t very Captain America of him.

Steve supposed he didn’t care what was very Captain America about him these days.

His rage was a voracious wildfire. It burned him from the inside out, stifled his patience and replaced it with a burning determination. One base on the outskirts of Kharkov had been completely stripped down to the foundations. Sam had stayed behind in another room to salvage what was left of an old monitor, and Steve had wandered through a highly fortified steel door. The room had been bare and made of textureless concrete. There was no electricity, just an oppressive darkness that seemed to swallow the flickering beam of his flashlight. In the middle there had been a chair. It was a macabre contraption that he’d remembered from a stack of black and white photographs. Something had clicked inside of him, jagged, ugly puzzle pieces shoving into spaces that weren’t meant to be filled.

On paper, the reality of the horrors were lost in Cyrillic type and lack of specificity. Whoever had written those documents was careful never to use a name, or cite anything that suggested their “subject” was human. Natasha refused to translate certain sections, despite Steve’s demands.

“I told you not to pull on this thread,” she had said, voice unwavering, but her eyes had been almost apologetic before she hid them behind tinted lenses. “There are some things that need to be told, but not by me.”

He had lunged at the chair like a feral animal, ripped at the loose straps with his bare hands until his nails bled and when that didn't satisfy, he took his shield to it. When Steve was on that plane, watching the blinding white landscape open its arms to accept his sacrifice, he thought it would have been a good enough substitution for not jumping after Bucky. It was his apology, but apologies were never enough. Apologies didn’t bring people back from the dead. Apologies only summoned their ghosts. They let them creep through the open door, let them slip into the passenger’s seat and the empty half of the bed, let them whisper old conversations down the back of one’s neck. He thought it would have eased the guilt rotting his heart to know that they would be even, that they would both die apart, alone and afraid.

It didn’t. They hadn’t.

Steve had failed Bucky, and was still failing him. He had let this happen. He might as well have been the one who restrained him, broke him, destroyed the good and replaced it with nothing but empty compliance.

In the aftermath, all that was left was a mangled pile of metal, leather, and stuffing strewn about like yellow puffs of snow. He had wanted to scream, and keep screaming until his lungs stopped working. Sam had found him like that, knees locked, chest heaving and blood dripping all over the concrete floor.

That was the first - and Steve vowed it to be the last - time he lost control.

His phone buzzed. Steve felt for it blindly, almost knocking over the alarm clock that blinked nine minutes after eleven at him on the nightstand. The New York skyline, awash with the colors of a spring sunset, greeted him before he typed in the passcode. He did not have any of his contacts labeled out of paranoia (he preferred to call it precaution), but he’d made sure to memorize the last four digits of every number, which was a sparse total of five.

The message was from Natasha.

_Meet me in Old Town in 20._

 

-

 

The fraying seatbelt barely holding itself together across his chest was the only thing that kept Steve from crashing into Sam when the taxi took a hard left.

He traced his fingers absently over the smooth screen of his phone, and took it from his pocket to check the time. Natasha hadn’t said anything else. He rubbed at his eyes until the buildings rushing by the passenger side window mixed into a haze of aged brick and bright lights. Next to him, Sam polished his pocket knife with the sleeve of his windbreaker.

His hands twitched like they always did when they were itching for a fight. They’d both agreed that his shield drew too much attention in public, so Steve had laid it to rest in the bottom of his duffel. He felt naked without it. Fists were what he’d grew up relying on, were half the reason he survived the back alleys of Brooklyn, but the shield had become an extra limb, a controllable extension of his enhancement. It was strange how attached he’d gotten over the years. How necessary a foot-and-a-half wide circular piece of painted metal had become, how grounding.

They pulled up to the curb outside of a nightclub. Steve considered a group of what looked to be college kids, laughing and stumbling on the illuminated pavement, wearing flashy clothing, oblivious for a moment to the world’s troubles. He never really had that when he was their age. Dancing and partying was something that was always out of arm’s reach, before and after the war. There were English pubs, dingy and thick with smoke that, even with his fixed lungs, still made him cough; earlier, there had been diners and bars with couples swirling around and flashes of Bucky’s white smile, his smooth voice trying his best to convince some dame to drag Steve’s pathetic, two left feet onto the dance floor, but that was never Steve’s scene. He was always so heavy with sickness; or worry about his ma, the rent, a grave plot; or a desperation to do something good for once, to be worth more, to be bigger than his fragile bones. He wondered if maybe it wasn’t so much not his scene, but that he never let himself have it - fun, a distraction from the weight of his life.

“Steve,” Sam said, warm hand pushing at Steve’s knee. “Time to go.”

He stepped out onto the pavement, and breathed in the humid air while Sam paid the driver. Bucharest at night stirred up an aching longing in Steve’s chest for home. Old Town seemed to be the capitol’s bright, bustling heart. During the day, there had been a faint suggestion of a heartbeat beneath the dull, old world facade, thrumming just under the surface; now, it was exposed, pulsing like a diluted version of the unresting streets of New York. Nothing compared to that, but it was a small comfort, a little rejuvenating, to be in a place that possessed a similar spark. Steve watched the taxi speed away into the night, weaving its way back into traffic like blood through a vein.

“She didn't tell you where to meet?” Sam asked.

“Thought I’d save you the trouble.”

Natasha appeared like a chill on a summer day, nothing and then all at once. Her hair was falling in frizzy curls, dripping red down the beige shoulders of the loose coat draped around her slim frame, boot heels clicking as she came to a stop in front of them.

“Last I checked, you were supposed to be in São Paolo,” Steve said, lips stretching into a smile. He’d missed the hell out of her.

“Oh, you know me. Not much for vacation,” she smiled back, teeth like pearly razors in the soft light from the fairy lights strung above their heads.

“So, what are we dealing with this time?” Sam asked, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders a stiff line.

Natasha sighed, and returned Steve’s stare. He saw the same impatience for action that he felt reflected back at him. She was so young, but her eyes told a different, bloody story. He didn't know much of her past, hadn’t read the hundreds and hundreds of files dumped onto the Internet out of respect, but he knew that living a life of lies was just as bad - probably worse - as having one put on pause and thrown back into motion. Wars - no matter what kind, or where they’d been fought, or who the enemy was - changed people. They were similar, but not quite the same, him and Natasha. They were just two people who didn't quite have a place in this world, but were fighting for it all the same.

“Let’s walk,” she said, looping her arm through Steve's.

Natasha was better at adjusting; she could stitch herself into a different life in a matter of hours, didn’t have time or patience for caring about what she had left behind in the process. She looked like any other night owl strolling through the district’s quaint alleyways. Steve wished he could be like that, but it just wasn't in his bones. The world had over a seventy year head start, and he was trying his damnedest to catch up, but it was easier to sit in silence and let himself be consumed by the monster that was his memories. Most of their arguments started because of that: he was a creature of attachment; she was a shapeshifter with more lives than even he had ever lived.

The three of them didn’t say a word for two blocks, the swish of Natasha’s long coat and her heels and the murmur of the city’s nightlife filling the silence. He almost forgot what they were here for, what with the peace and ease of it all. They could have been a trio of friends out for a stroll, a catch-up after a long day of work, except he was very conscious of Sam fiddling with the knife in his pocket, and the tick of his own fingers, desperate to do something.

“You're not being followed,” Natasha said, finally, reading his mind.

There had been others - and there would be more - who took an interest in him and Sam’s business. It wasn’t a surprise, considering they were two men whose faces and names had been plastered across every national news channel and paper since the infodump and helicarrier incident. Anyone could open a history book and read about Steve’s childhood, which was just as much Bucky’s. It wasn’t a surprise that the worst kinds of people had came to the same conclusion: Steve Rogers would lead you straight to the gold at the end of the rainbow.

He was wary to feel too relieved about Natasha’s statement. There was an edge to her words, not distressed, but. It was just that: a but. The space between the shoe that was dropping and the floor.

“Then, what? Is this a social call?” Sam asked, going for casual and missing by more than a mile.

“Natasha, what's wrong?” Steve cut in, because he knew the look of a bearer of bad news, and even with all that training and reputation of hers, she still couldn't shake the tightness around her eyes.

They could have been found again, but that didn't warrant a flight halfway around the world. And she’d just said they weren't being followed. Natasha was efficient; she wouldn’t waste her time if it wasn't urgent, she was the best agent he’d worked with since -

“I came here to tell you that Peggy Carter was admitted to Washington Hospital’s ICU two days ago. She’s stable, but her family isn’t expecting a full recovery.”

Steve was calm. He was not breathing. Steve was calm. He felt his arms go rigid, and Natasha’s careful mask flickered to surprised pain as she tried to wrestle out of his grip. Steve still wasn't breathing. Two fucking years. He’d been gone for two years on a wild, endless goose chase, and he’d considered the consequences of giving up so much time, but he had not considered this. He was exhaling, but he could not inhale.

Death - no, she wasn't dead, she wasn’t, Nat said she wasn't - had a way of putting things into perspective like nothing else.

There hadn’t been anyone with him when he crashed except Peggy’s static, tear-thick voice talking about dancing of all things. It was the end of the line, and she had been there for him. Of course, she had. She was always the strong one. Steve could waltz around in red, white and blue and stop wars till the day he died, and he still wouldn't be half the person she was. Peggy Carter was a monument; she was built to last, to keep going, and going. God, it cut straight through him like a white-hot bullet to even think that she could be gone from his life.

He’d stood over too many six foot deep holes that were meant for too many friends. Christ, he’d visited Bucky’s grave in Arlington. Only once, though. Even then, he’d known it wasn't quite right. Dying didn't fit people like them, Bucky and Peggy. It was too mortal, too small. Steve had taken them for granted. He’d squandered what little time he’d been given back to spend with her. What a waste. He was so lucky, so impossibly lucky, and yet he’d been so damn selfish.

“Steve, hey. Hey! C’mon, breathe with me, man,” Sam said, garbled and thick like syrup in Steve’s ringing ears.

He was on the ground. Natasha was crouched directly in front of him, and Sam was cradling his back, checking his pulse. Someone was wheezing; it reminded him vaguely of the asthma he’d had as a kid.

“Rogers, look at me. Look at me,” Natasha ordered, and oh, it was him. The reedy, shallow breaths were his.

Steve tried to apologize, but his lungs were seizing, chest too tight. Everything was too tight. He was still not breathing. Black spots were forming at the edges of his vision, and he could feel the promise of unconsciousness pulling him under like waves. All-encompassing like ice. Peggy was chastising him about being late. He was always too late. He had so much time, and yet never enough. Not when it mattered.

“Peg,” Steve managed, gasping. He was starving for air, but that wasn’t anything new. He’d gotten used to that years ago.

“We need to get him out of here right now,” Natasha was saying as Steve tried to stand, and then he was falling, falling, falling towards the water - no, that was concrete, his legs were giving out - and the world faded to black.

 

-

 

 _You’ll never find me!_ Bucky laughed, his too wide grin showing off his missing front tooth.

 _That's because you always pick the hiding places I can't get to_ , Steve grumbled as closed his eyes and started the countdown.

The sun turned his eyelids a brilliant pink, yet he felt as cold as winter.

 

-

 

Steve was sitting at that table - the one in the pub him and the boys had pledged to lay down their lives for each other and the war - and Peggy was at his left. This was taken from a memory, but dreams had a way of warping the details. A bomb hadn't touched this place yet, but it had the same eerie hush about it, like they were in a tomb. Waiting.

 _Go home_ , Peggy said, lacquered nails flashing in the light. She sounded like an old record, half-remembered. He wanted to touch her hand, but he was immobile.

_It’s time to go home, Steve._

 

-

 

Steve woke up disoriented and so dehydrated each breath was like thousands of claws shredding his throat on the way down.

He didn't feel rested, only worn thin, like dough that had been kneaded too much. Steve watched the ceiling fan make lazy circles, spinning its long shadows around the motel room. Sam and Natasha must have dragged him back here after his breakdown. Shame coursed through him, hot and uneasy like the ache in his limbs and back from being crunched into a ball on a couch that was too small for his too big frame.

The ceiling fan continued its monotonous revolutions. Steve’s stomach turned.

Sitting up proved to be harder than expected. His vision warped, blood pounding in his ears. After a moment of adjustment, he could make out the outline of Sam slumped in the armchair by the door, a sweater draped over his lap. His head was tilted forward, arms loose by his sides like he hadn't bothered to make himself comfortable.

He shuffled past the kitchen. Natasha was nowhere to be found, but her coat was crumpled on top of the dining table along with an empty pistol cartridge. A promise that she would be back. His hand fumbled in the dark, sliding along the wall until his fingers found the switch and bathed the tiny bathroom in flickering, yellow-tinted light. The counter was littered with his and Sam’s toiletries. Their toothbrushes, side by side. The green one was Sam's. Steve’s was red. A package of cheap razors. Half of what Steve owned was spread around a fake granite sink, and it should have been depressing, but it was his choice.

Steve had chosen to leave behind everything and everyone for Bucky, including Peggy. It was the greatest sin he’d ever committed, abandoning her, could never be absolved. He didn't want it to be. He would carry that with him for eternity, and then some.

Steve had loved Peggy then, and he still did, but it was not the same. He had held her arthritic hands, and looked into her watery brown eyes, and his heart still beat out of rhythm like it did the first time he laid eyes on her, but it was not the same. Nothing was the same. He’d know then and he knew now that his love for Peggy Carter was reverent and kind, but it was not a love he could have lived with having her be at the receiving end of till death parted them. She’d married a good man, and raised a lovely family, and she had been happy - without Steve. Of course, Peggy was overjoyed to have him back in her life, but the point was there were many kinds of love and theirs had gotten a whole section at the Smithsonian, but that's all it was: an exhibit. Their love was encased in glass, and printed in romance novels, and Steve was the only one alive to know it wasn't exactly true.

The only absolute in his life - and Steve knew this in his heart of hearts, down to his socked feet and all the way to the center of his soul - was that he had been in love with James Buchanan Barnes from the moment he watched through swollen eyes that cocksure boy throw a meaner right hook than he’d ever been able to. There were many kinds of love, and his love for Bucky was so massive and ancient that it was older than the body reflected back at him in the cracked mirror. Steve loved so much, too much. He thought of his mother, and her heart that shouldn't have had room for two spitfire boys who knew what was good for the other but never themselves. He thought of a red dress and lipstick to match, and the time he’d almost checked out after a shot to the right lung and Bucky’s hands, his yelling, his discursive whispers tethering him to the land of the living.

Loving Bucky hadn’t ever been easy. There was Depression-ravaged Brooklyn, and the first time he’d had the word _queer_ spit in his face. There was a one room apartment, and a sketchbook hidden in the floorboards, and elbows knocking, and hands brushing, and excuses. There was poverty, and jobs that paid too little for what they demanded, and sickness, and arguments that left them bleeding. There was a train, a hand outstretched, and the feeling that he’d been turned inside out and couldn't ever be put back together again. Dugan had had to drag him back in by his collar, shouting about _what the hell’s wrong with you_ and _where the fuck is Barnes_ , but Steve hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off of the hole in the wall, and the blinding white snow, and he’d thought, _But I loved him_. Bucky couldn't have died, because Steve was in love with him, and they’d promised each other they were invincible, hadn't they? Bucky had been all dressed up in his uniform the evening before he got shipped out, and grabbed Steve’s small hand, crushed it to his chest right about his heart, and said, _You listenin’ to me? Hey, Stevie, c’mon. I’m not gonna die on you. Together till the end, huh? I promised you that, and you know how I am with my promises. Never gonna let you down._

Steve knew what he had to do, but it was like a knife to the gut, slowly and steadily cutting his insides to pieces. Leaving felt too much like surrendering, but he knew it had to be done. The white flag was already being strung up. Peggy was an old, old woman, and, no matter how much Steve wished it wasn't true, was reaching the end of her life. It was going to kill him, this constant cycle of choosing and abandoning and losing everything anyway. He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet, and pressed his forehead to the cool porcelain, nose burning from the smell of bleach.

If Bucky was alive, Steve was alive. Together till the end. How could he just leave him? How could he let him get away again when they had come so far? How could he let him go, period? Steve wasn’t good at giving up. Never had been, never would be. Giving up had been beat out of him from the second he was brought into this world, chomping at the bit from the get go to fight till the last breath. God, listen to yourself, Steve thought. This wasn’t just about him anymore and his pride, wasn’t just his decision. Reality was Peggy, and Natasha, and Sam.

Sam, most of all, deserved more than what Steve gave him. He was one of the best men Steve ever knew. He deserved a friend who wasn't this selfish and unhinged. He deserved to go home, and leave Steve to his hopeless crusade, but no matter how many times he suggested and pleaded, Sam wouldn't.

“God, you’re such a dumbass sometimes. It was my choice. You’re stuck with me,” Sam had said on a red eye to Kiev.

There was something in Sam’s dark eyes that he had understood. Sam was a soldier, and he’d come back, sure, but the war liked to take its time leaving people. It was clear it hadn't left either of them yet. Having a mission offered a sick, robotic clarity to people of their sort, but it wasn’t Steve’s right to drag Sam back into that hell. Sam had a good thing going at the VA, and he was helping people, which was more than Steve could say. It was Sam’s choice to join him, but Steve had practically thrown him into it. He owed it to Sam to let him be the one to call it quits, because Steve just didn't have it in him. Steve just didn't have the strength to choose anymore.

“Mind if I join you?”

Steve lifted his head. His bangs were long enough to tangle in his lashes. Haircut. He needed a haircut before they left. Natasha was leaning in the doorway. She was wearing one of Sam’s sweaters, one shoulder drooping halfway down her left bicep. For a second, he could imagine her going about a normal day like this. Approachable, and relaxed. He wondered if she ever had the chance. Barton wasn’t one for domesticity, either, but the notion that they could share something like that, something like happiness, loosened something in him. Steve didn’t like to ask her about her personal life. Facts and stories meant more when they were offerings, not obligations. He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut. Christ, he was out of it, couldn’t even stay on topic for more than a second. Get yourself together.

“Hey,” he rasped.

It was bad enough having to be manhandled back to the room; he didn't need her or Sam seeing him like this, lost in his own self pity on the floor of a dingy hotel bathroom. Rock bottom was always redefining itself for Steve. Natasha came and sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, against the wall.

“This wallpaper is really ugly,” She wondered out loud, eyebrows drawn together as if she was seriously perturbed by the uneven pattern of lilies and vines. Peggy’s favorite flowers were white lilies. Steve used to bring a bouquet when he visited because they never failed to make her smile, even if it took her all afternoon to recognize that it was him - _yeah, Pegs, it’s Steve, your Steve_ \- who’d brought them. Otherwise, Steve had to agree with Natasha. It really was god awful.

“Sleep deprivation and malnutrition can do a number on the body, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Nat,” Steve started, trailed off into an exhale.

“I watched you have a panic attack in the middle of the street, so don’t bother with the bullshit,” Natasha said, quiet, but the softness from before was gone.

Steve wasn't fit to be in the field anymore. There was no use in denying it. He was unstable. He was shivering. He was drained. He was strung out. Steve was all these things, and nothing at all. He was empty in ways that no normal human could have handled. He was a sad, old man, watching time slip through his fingers like grains of sand through a sieve. There was so much that needed to be said, but his mind was at a standstill, gears at a halt.

“I can’t,” Steve tried, but his throat was closing, forcing the words back down. It burned like acid, and then smooth hands were wiping at his face, and small but sturdy arms were around his shoulders, and he was breathing in laundromat soap, and the calming smell of Natasha’s lotion. “I can’t choose, Natasha. I can’t _do_ that. I can’t. I _can’t_.”

“You’re not choosing,” she murmured, fingers carding through the hair curling around the back of his neck. She always knew what he meant, even when he didn’t, even when he couldn’t say it out loud. Steve was so grateful for her. “You’re prioritizing. You're okay, Steve, it’s okay. You’re not alone.”

Steve tried to believe that. It was the least he could do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hospitals had never meant anything good to Steve.

_ Washington, D.C. _

_ U.S.A. _

_ Three days later _

  
  


“It’s about taking back control of the situation. Think about it like an op. If there’s a problem, you do everything you can to fix it, right? Get things back to normal? That’s how this is, except the problems are your anxiety and fears. Instead of, you know, bombs and bullets,” Sam said around a mouthful of peanuts he'd gotten from the flight attendant. He shook the bag at Steve.

 

“You make it sound easy,” Steve replied, and nodded at Sam to pour some in his palm.

 

“It takes practice, and even after you think you have yourself figured out? Shit happens, man. We’ve all got baggage, and it gets heavy. I’m here whenever you need me to shoulder some of it. It's okay to not be okay.”

 

Steve nodded to himself. Having this conversation was worse than getting shot in the gut. Talking about the incident in Bucharest meant he had to face it, and that wasn’t something Steve was prepared to do. Maybe it wasn’t so much preparation, but will. His emotional turmoil wasn’t anywhere close to the top of his priorities, but it seemed to be at the top of Sam’s, since he’d made it a point to take the aisle seat and corner Steve into a one-on-one therapy session. What helped was Sam didn’t beat around the bush. He didn’t try to sugarcoat that Steve was a mess, had been for a while, and needed useful solutions. Steve respected that, even if he felt like jumping out of the emergency hatch.

 

“I can never tell you this enough, but thank you,” Steve said.

 

“Oh, don't get me wrong. I would be giving you so much shit about this if I wasn't so worried. The dashing hero, Sam Wilson, carrying the damsel in distress, Captain America, in his arms to safety,” Sam said, a dramatic edge to his words, a hand on his heart.

 

Steve nudged him hard with his knee.

 

“Alright, alright. Honestly, big guy, it’s no problem. I’m more than happy to help, but don’t get ahead of yourself. You’re nowhere near out of the woods yet.”

 

Being friends with Sam was like looking in a mirror. It wasn't that they were the same kind of person, two soldiers finding their way through the war zone that was a normal American life; it was their tragedies. They understood each other’s pain.

 

They both knew the story: the one that was sad, then sadder. The one where they fooled themselves, pulled the wool over their own eyes, and let themselves become comfortable. The one where that wool got ripped away and thrown into the wind, and all that was left was actually nothing, not even a body. There wasn’t even closure, for that matter, but how could there ever be closure? Closure fell down a cliff right out of Steve’s bare hands. Closure got blown out of the sky right out of Sam’s. The fact that Sam picked himself up out of the dirt, and decided to put his energy into helping others find that closure they were never afforded instead of drowning in self pity was something Steve would infinitely admire.

 

"I know," Steve said to the seat in front of him.

 

The pilot announced that they were ten minutes out, and the two of them remained silent. Natasha was a few rows ahead of them, her blonde wig a bright spot against the navy pleather seats. Sam poured the rest of the peanuts into his mouth. Steve turned away to look out the window, and tried not to crush the ones Sam had given him to dust.

 

-

 

Hospitals had never meant anything good to Steve.

 

Before the serum, when every little chill sent him spiraling into a fever, he used to beg not to go, not him, not there, please not there. It wasn't like they could have afforded the visit anyway - especially not after his ma passed - but it was the idea, a recurring nightmare looming against the horizon ten blocks down that everyone pretended not to share, that he wouldn't come out of there alive. Everyone these days said they worked miracles, but he only knew the faraway look in his mother’s eyes when she’d come home after a 24 hour shift; the hushed stories of victims lying in a ward with dozens of other doomed patients coughing up blood and illness; counting the minutes until another neighbor was sent to the morgue. To Steve, hospitals were just a place one waited to die, not to be saved.

 

A nurse passed by, pushing a patient in a wheelchair with an IV drip towards the elevators. Neither of them paid him any attention.

 

For a place where no one seemed to want to talk above a whisper, the ICU was deafening. Machines beeped, and wailed, and clicked. Families huddled around beds, crying, or arguing, or both. Peggy’s room was at the end of the hall on the right, unguarded but regularly monitored by staff, according to Natasha’s intel. Steve pulled his ball cap further down his forehead, adjusted the glasses on his nose. Sam and Natasha were taking care of security. Namely, they were making sure the cameras weren't going to display Captain America’s face to whatever government agencies had him on their watch lists.

 

Steve hesitated. He could only see a small fraction of the room beyond the cracked door, and the consequences of someone - a doctor, a relative of Peggy’s - recognizing him kept his feet glued to the smooth tile. It had been easier two years ago; people had been more concerned with damage control and rebuilding, than rounding up the heroes they wanted to blame all of their troubles on. The steady blip of a heart monitor echoed in the hallway. Steve steadied himself. Sam and Natasha had his back. It was fine; everything was going to be fine.

 

He knocked lightly on the door before entering. It was a modest, but decent room. There were two armchairs near the window, and a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. A crime drama was playing on mute. An empty vase stood vigil on the nightstand amidst a few get well cards and a photograph of Peggy’s family. Her husband was holding their son and daughter, all of them captured mid-laugh in black and white. She’d told Steve during one of his last visits before him and Sam left that that one was her favorite because of how natural it was. No posing. No backdrop. Steve understood. It was honest in the way a lot of things weren’t anymore.

 

Peggy was asleep. She was propped up by two pillows, her steel-gray curls spilling around her shoulders, tubes coming from all directions but ultimately converging in and around her resting form. Steve collapsed into the plastic chair by her bedside. His vision swam, the room degrading into blurry colors. That dreadful feeling of being able to exhale but not inhale was back, and Steve tried to do what Sam had told him on the plane.  _ Take control _ . He sat there, and tried to suck in air, and sought out Peggy’s hand with closed eyes, wading through the suffocating darkness for something that was real and warm. Her skin was wrinkled, but soft. It was enough.

 

“Steve? What on earth are you doing here?”

 

He startled, eyes snapping open to find Peggy studying him. She looked exhausted, the skin around her eyes puffy and a little dark. He squeezed her hand. It was alright, and she was alright. Steve breathed.

 

“Had to make sure they were doing right by you,” he managed after a moment.

 

“You look like you should be the one in hospital.”

 

“I'm fine. Really, I am. Just a bit jet-lagged.”

 

“I may be an old woman now, but age has not made me that blind,” she said, stroking a thumb along the inside of his wrist.

 

Peggy was dissecting him with those dark eyes in a way that sent him spinning, shooting back in time so fast he thought he might get whiplash. It was 1944, and he had a bullet in his lung that had him tasting iron for a week. It’d only taken about four days for his body to heal - the bullet popping out of his chest on the second - and Peggy had tried to force him into taking a leave. I _ will not have you jeopardize this mission because you’ve convinced yourself that you are fine _ , she’d shouted at him in the med tent. She had the same look now that she did then. The one that said she knew the brand of bullshit he was offering her, and she didn't appreciate it one bit.

 

“Do you remember the time,” he started, let his mouth hang open on the last syllable, and stared at their tangled hands.

 

It was always grounding, being around the people who understood him, but it was a little too easy falling into the arms of nostalgia around Peggy.

 

He’d tried connecting with the boys about a year after he got out of the ice. Jones was back in his home state, living the rest of his days with his wife, children, and grandchildren. Steve called every once in awhile to ask after him, and his family. Morita was in California, and he’d given Steve an open invitation to stop by if he ever found himself in the area. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Not yet. 

 

Falsworth was buried somewhere in England. He’d died almost a decade after the war. A heart attack got him in the end.

 

Steve had found Dugan’s headstone after getting ahold of his younger sister. He was next to his wife. His sister told him Timothy hadn’t wanted Arlington. Just a normal grave. No fanfare. Steve couldn’t help but laugh at that. Dugan not wanting attention? Was the world ending? Really, it wasn’t at all funny, because Steve felt the same way. When - it felt more and more like he should start using if - he died, the whole world would be looking at his too-big-for-his-own-good body, and they would make it a worldwide tragedy, and future generations would only grieve the hero, not the man. Steve Rogers should have been forgotten in a sea of other poor, pauper’s graves, but now here Steve Rogers was, knowing he would never really rest in peace.

 

_ Christ _ , he thought, holding back a snort.  _ How fuckin’ dramatic _ .

 

Talking about the not-so-golden days tasted too sour on his tongue, so he said, “I had a dream about you. You told me it was time to come home.”

 

Her laughter was jolting, unexpectedly sweet. It seemed to shave years off of her beautiful face. He couldn't even bother to be embarrassed when she was smiling like that.

 

"You're making decisions based off of dreams now?"

 

"I think it'll be good for me, being back. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find some clarity.”

 

“Then go find it. I love seeing you, but I'm not going anywhere just yet,” Peggy said, smile fading. She let go of his hand and moved to cup his cheeks, palms cool but firm. “Listen to me. I'm telling you that whatever it is that’s bothering you, you can’t fix it sitting here. Dreams are dreams, darling. This is reality.”

 

Reality. Steve thought he’d known what that word meant.

 

Looking at Peggy, he saw two images, one superimposed over the other. The woman from then, and the woman now; it made his eyes hurt. It was the kind of thing he saw whenever he caught his reflection. Everything, every memory, every moment in time, bleeding into one another, but never quite mixing. Oil, and water. The past, and the future. The life he lived, and the life he was living.

 

_ Do you believe in miracles, Peg? _ He wanted to asked, leaning into her touch like a flower turning towards the sun, but she would see right through him. This was a secret that couldn’t be shared.

 

-

 

Sam and Natasha were waiting in the parking garage across the street. Natasha had her feet kicked up on the dash of the van they commandeered from behind a BP, laptop resting on the tops of her thighs. The hood of her sweatshirt was obscuring most of her face, but a few stray wisps of wheat-colored bangs peaked out. Sam was talking to her about something, waving his hands every once in awhile. A wave of affection surged and crashed against his ribs, settling as a warm current in his chest. It was small moments like these that reminded Steve of how much he truly cared for his friends.

 

He rapped his knuckles three times on the passenger window, and the backseat door slid open a few seconds later. Steve climbed in, and pushed aside some stray tools and a bucket coated in old paint. The upholstery reeked of cigarette smoke, turpentine, and fast food.

 

“You officially never made a visit to MedStar Washington Hospital Center,” Natasha announced, turning around in her seat to flash him a tiny grin. “It should also please you to know that I made some calls. There’s going to be extra security on her floor from this day forward.”

 

Steve nodded. It did please him. Not worrying about the people he loved was like breathing without air: an impossibility.

 

“Dinner, anyone? Or is it lunch? Time zones, man,” Sam sighed, rubbing at his eyes behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

 

The conversation faded into white noise as he chewed on his thumb’s cuticle, and watched the city turn to suburb, blacktop bleeding into grass. D.C. hadn't changed much, from what Steve could tell. It was a small mercy that their route took them away from the Potomac and the ghosts that now haunted it. He thought of it anyway. So many lives - civilian and S.H.I.E.L.D. - had been lost, utterly destroyed. Would they put that in their history museums? Would they talk about how the great, righteous Captain America turned out to be just as human as the rest of them in the end? Steve never asked for the fame. Sure, at first it had been fun, even exhilarating, being the center of attention, but he wasn't sure he liked the man he saw in the mirror anymore.

 

Then, there was Bucky. Bucky made it clear that he didn't want to be found. Steve didn't know what to do with that - or, more accurately, he didn't know what to do with himself. There was no war. S.H.I.E.L.D. was dismantled. Although it had been reassuring, his visit with Peggy had afforded him little direction.  D.C. wasn't safe for them. Sam's condo was most definitely under constant surveillance.  Steve supposed he'd go home. Brooklyn was the beginning of everything, the place whose name was carved into his bones, his heart; it made sense to come full circle, even if it took a near century.

 

The sky was a deep purple, streaks of pink outlining the billowing clouds above orange-tinted roofs. It looked like rain in the distance, but it was too far away to be a threat. The sound of the seats groaning and creaking brought Steve back to himself, the car, and the fact that he was no longer alone.

 

When he turned, Natasha was watching him with that quiet intensity of hers. She was searching for something, and Steve held her gaze, waited for the final verdict.

 

“You’ve never asked me,” she murmured, her words almost lost in the rumble of the engine. “I know you want to.”

 

“Never asked what?”

 

She stretched out, head resting against the opposite door and the heels of her sneakers barely touching his right thigh, instead of elaborating. There were a lot of questions he had for her that weren’t meant to be asked. At least, not now. Not here. He sighed through his nose, and turned his attention back to the passing scenery. Another time, then. 

 

A sign rushed past the window. He blinked. For some reason, they were merging onto the highway.

 

“Thought we were stopping for something?” Steve piped up, confused by their change in direction. 

 

Sam and Natasha were good at what they did, but there was always the possibility that someone had used Peggy as bait. Steve knew he was transparent, wore his heart outside his armor like some cruel self-punishment, a bleeding beacon for the scum of the earth. There were too damn many who relished in using that against him. And God only knew what kind of charges were on their heads, what the news was saying about America’s missing heroes - if they were even still calling them heroes. Maybe they’d picked up a tail.

  
“We are,” Sam replied. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Alex, what the literal hell? It's been months, and this is all you give us? You said you'd update on a normal schedule! Also, where is Bucky? This is a stucky fic after all!" I know, I know. I want to deeply apologize for being a hypocrite. I swore to myself that I wouldn't do this, but here we are. I know this is a short chapter, but I thought I'd throw you guys a bone. To be honest, I'm still trying to develop where this story is going, amidst all of my other real life responsibilities, so progress has slowed down considerably. I promise that Bucky is going to appear very soon. Hope this chapter made some sense, and wasn't too poorly paced. As always, thanks for reading!


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